The image, associated with a nashid (song) written to celebrate Hamas’s twenty-second anniversary, depicts the number twenty-two with the colors of the Palestinian flag, flanked by fighters. The dominant color of the twenty-two is green, which is considered the traditional color of the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe, and has been adopted as a sacred color based on Qur’anic verses (76:21; 18:65-82) and a reliable hadith (prophetic tradition or report) that associates green with “universally good things.” The color is also related to jihadi doctrine, as it is believed that while the corpses of martyrs lay in their graves, their souls are put into the bodies of green birds that drink from the rivers of Eden and eat from its fruit.
The image somewhat incongruously also includes soaring white doves and butterflies. Finally, the partial text of the shahada (Islamic testimony of faith holding that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger) appears on the twenty-two and at the tip of a faint Hamas logo.
